


Nevertheless, She Persisted

by Arsenic



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Background Relationships, Canonical Character Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Fix-It, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Long Live Feedback Comment Project, Multi, WIP Big Bang 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-31
Updated: 2019-08-31
Packaged: 2020-10-04 03:06:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20463998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arsenic/pseuds/Arsenic
Summary: Natasha's putting one foot in front of the other.  Okoye is, too.  Carol: same.  They might as well do it together, right?  (There might be a little more to it than that.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Huge thanks to Teeelsie for the beta, especially b/c, let's face it: this is pretty niche. All remaining mistakes are due to my own stubborn willfulness.
> 
> More thanks go out to the mods of WIPBB, who are the only reason I pulled my shit together enough to get this done, and who have graciously, two years in a row, accepted that I am a failboat at getting in my claim for an artist and let me post with the challenge anyway.
> 
> I chose not to warn for this story because I do not feel it needs an MCD tag, but I feel like reasonable minds could disagree. If you need to contact me for safety's sake before reading, feel free.

At first, it's just sex. Okoye pushes Natasha against the wall of the palace, bites into her lip almost hard enough to break skin, and Natasha allows it. They both need it, need something, in place of ashes and dust, blood and grief. Helplessness.

Mindless sex is as good as anything.

Afterwards, when Natasha has scores on her arms that weren't there before she took her body armor off, when she can taste salt on her tongue, she says, "I'm sorry."

Okoye glances at her, confusion mild, but present. 

Natasha clarifies, "About T'Challa. He—I would have liked to have known him better, but it's…I have not lost my king."

Okoye rolls onto her back on the bed they made it to at some point—Natasha is not even certain it is _Okoye's_ bed—and says, "We played together as children." She laughs, the laughter of someone within whom something has broken. "He was terrible at fighting then. Entirely about diplomacy, and books, and family."

"He was more than just your king," Natasha says softly.

"Much, much more." Okoye swallows. "I am sorry for your losses as well."

Natasha has been determinedly Not Thinking About It, about Wanda, who's barely broken her twenties and whose life has been as an orphan, an experiment, and a fugitive. About Bucky, who had just gotten himself back, inasmuch as he ever would be able. About Sam, who'd protected her when he’d had no reason to, and made her laugh at least once a day, even when things were at their worst. Her stomach and throat feel hot, her eyes sting.

She hasn't tried to call Clint. She can't. So long as she doesn’t, he can still be out there, still alive and whole.

She says, "This isn't over. This cannot be over."

Okoye blinks slowly. "There is wisdom in admitting defeat."

"Yeah," Natasha says, "but we aren't exactly the go-to people when it comes to wisdom, are we?"

Okoye's smile is unhappy, but fierce. "No, not at all."

* * *

Natasha doesn't mean for it to continue. This is no time to be building attachments, not even ones based on the sheer blinding hotness of a woman who can legitimately keep her pinned and down for a full minute at a time.

It's just that after hours of watching Bruce and Steve, both hollowed out and lost and trying to find a way, any way, out of this, days when going outside is impossible for the sheer amount of ash on the breeze, weeks of watching Ramonda hold to what is left with her bare hands, both of them need it. They need the reality of each other's skin, the heat of their mouths, the synchronicity of touch and compassion and violence.

Natasha stops hiding the marks three weeks in, too tired to care. Steve blinks at the perfect row of teeth on her upper arm and then, for the first time since that day on the field, smiles. It is the tiniest of smiles, almost lost in the vastness that is Steve, but it's there, and when she manages a smile back, it even stays for long enough to be a memory, something tangible, something true.

* * *

New York is cold. That makes sense, it’s November, but it doesn’t feel as if anything should make sense, as if the world should still be turning. The compound is quiet. Nat hasn’t been back since Germany, and doesn’t want to be back now, when it can’t possibly feel like home. 

In her fist, she works not to squeeze the pager she’s clutching too tightly. The Wakandans found the signal, too strong to be trying to reach anything on earth. M’Baku, helping Ramonda to run the country, sent Nat with one of his warriors to retrieve it. Natasha had known it on sight. Fury had always kept it with him. It moved around, some days on his desk, others on his cabinetry, wherever he dropped it for the day. But never far.

She is left at the compound, where she calls Okoye. Okoye side eyes the apparently outdated (even for non-Wakandans) tech, and asks, “What is it trying to do?”

Nat shakes her head. “He never—” She swallows, rubs at the back of her neck. “I don’t know.”

Okoye nods slowly. “You have the capability to make sure the signal keeps sending?”

“Bruce set something up. Tony never locked him out of anything, so we’ve got all of his toys while we—Rhodey’s still trying to find him.” Natasha can’t look at Okoye as she says it. They both know it’s probably a lost cause.

Okoye doesn’t say so. Instead, she says, “Perhaps try to rest.”

Natasha has rarely slept more than an hour at a time that hasn’t been after the two of them bringing each other off, competitive and athletic and as exhausting as anything outside sparring could be. None of them have felt like fighting, not even for sport. She hasn’t been able to even consider rest without Okoye’s hands locked around her wrists, the other woman’s arms a tether keeping her tied to this planet, this existence. “Yeah. You too.”

Neither of them moves to close the channel.

* * *

Fury had that pager the entire span of time Natasha knew him and he never once said, “So I know this chick who’s powered by the tesseract, glows like a firefly on steroids, and can carry a starship on her shoulder like it’s a messenger bag.”

Things being what they are, it’s a significant omission. Natasha shouldn’t be surprised, she sure as fuck shouldn’t be hurt. She supposes it doesn’t matter.

Carol brings back Tony, and Natasha watches as he and Pepper fall into each other, complete each other. She looks away, because that’s theirs, not hers, and it isn’t right, leaning into it emotionally as if it might make other things better.

Carol also watches Tony—who, okay, is an acquired taste, but Natasha has long since acquired the taste and will go toe to toe with anyone, including infinity-stone-engined-glowey-girls, who even thinks about hurting him—fall spectacularly apart, and simply picks him up, puts him in a bed, and waits for the rest of them to level out.

Carol might be the only functioning element in this picture right now. Which does not mean Natasha’s going to let her have Thanos to herself. They’re a team. Carol can join, or she can…well, probably wipe the floor with all of them, but Natasha will make her do that first.

Instead, Carol listens. She argues and challenges and pushes, but she listens.

And later that night, when everything is over, when all is still lost, Carol says, “Tell me how to help.”

Natasha shakes her head. There is no help, there’s _nothing_. Carol frames her face with her hands and says, “Natasha. I’m one of the most powerful beings in the universe and I cannot fix this. Tell me how to help. Just one thing. Just one.”

Natasha is afraid to open her mouth. Afraid she might start screaming and not stop. But Carol looks a little wild-eyed, and all Natasha has to do is ask for something. She means to say something stupid, something inconsequential, something like, “I could use a pint of ice cream.”

Instead she says, “I want Okoye.”

“Okoye, okay.” Carol nods. “Please tell me that’s something I can get for you.”

“Someone. She’s—she’s in Wakanda.”

“Wakanda. I can do that. Just—hold on.”

Natasha digs her nails into Carol’s back. They fly above the clouds and it never gets chilly, the heat of Carol, of her power, completely enveloping them. Carol says, “That’s some next-level vibranium shielding,” at some point and Natasha makes a sound of agreement. Carol brings her back down to the ground, but doesn’t let go, making sure she’s settled, her feet solid on the ground.

“Sorry,” Natasha murmurs, not even knowing what she’s sorry for, but knowing she is.

Carol shakes her head. “Do you want me to leave—I can—”

Natasha doesn’t let go. She keeps breathing, waiting. Okoye will come. The minute they came through the shield, she would have been notified. Sure enough, there are footsteps, moving quickly, rushed in a way Okoye never is outside of battle. Natasha does not look up. Carol asks, “Okoye?”

Okoye asks, “What has happened?”

Natasha can’t move. If she moves, she will shake apart. Scatter on the wind like so many others. She will not do that now, not in front of Okoye, who has already lost so much that way. Carol says, “She wanted—she needed you.”

There is a pause. Maybe the two of them are assessing each other. Natasha cannot breathe. Okoye comes up behind her, and hems her in, Carol’s stone in front of her, Okoye’s vibranium behind. In the too-too quiet of this half-dead Wakanda, this broken world, Natasha swallows screams that go down like rubbing alcohol.

* * *

They decide in the morning that they need a plan, or, at the very least, something that resembles one. Natasha doesn’t remember falling asleep. She wakes in a bed, tucked between a sleeping Okoye, and Carol, who’s running her fingers through Nat’s hair and staring at the ceiling. They stay silent, dozing on and off in the light of the early Wakandan morning, until Okoye wakes.

Natasha says, “I—can you come to the compound? We need to talk, to…talk.”

They fly back in a jet, since that will allow Carol not to have to fly Okoye back to Wakanda. Making their way to the kitchen, Natasha clocks that Rocket’s sleeping curled into one of the entertainment center’s cubbies. Nebula is in the kitchen area, sitting at the eat-in table, staring at her hands. Rhodey is looking out the window. Steve is mechanically eating cereal.

Steve nods at the three of them. “Pepper took Tony home this morning. He’s going to be fine.”

“Where are Thor and Bruce?” Natasha asks.

“Thor left a note about seeing to his people. Friday says there’s a settlement in Norway. Bruce said he’d call when he figured out where he was going.”

Natasha forces herself to ask the next question. “Friday, has Clint made contact or—do we have any information on him?”

“I am still searching, Ms. Romanoff, I’m sorry I cannot give you more information.”

“You’re good, you’re fine.” Everything is going to be fine. She breathes in. 

Natasha can’t say it’s surprising that it’s Rocket who asks the question nobody else wants to. He lopes in, rubbing at what passes for bedhead on a not-raccoon, yawning, and says, “All right. What now?”

* * *

Natasha sends Steve back to the city a week into what passes for their plan. She might be quietly coming apart at the seams with nothing to do but run a comm center trying to patch together a universe that has shattered, but Steve is silently losing his fucking mind.

She wants him here. Without him, the complex will be entirely still, nothing but herself and her thoughts.

She’s better than that. She will force herself to be. He needs to go, so she makes him. She invokes Sam and Bucky, the way the world needs him right now, maybe in a different way, but it still does. There are a lot of words, most of which she doesn’t remember after the fact. When he’s gone, she does something she hasn’t done since her twenty-first birthday, safe in the company of Clint, Coulson, Maria, and Fury: she gets drunk. 

She regrets all of her choices ever upon waking up the next day, but she kicks herself out of the bed, all the same. She drinks three glasses of water, eats some peanut butter straight from the jar, takes a scorching hot shower and puts herself in some jeans and a t-shirt. Little things.

Okoye picks up on the second ring when Natasha calls. It’s night in Wakanda, Okoye should probably be asleep, but minus chemical interference, none of them is doing great with that. Okoye looks her up and down and says, “Were you run over by a particularly aggressive vehicle?”

“I got drunk.”

Okoye blinks. “I was under the impression that wasn’t something you did.”

“Mostly not. Just. First night alone in the house and all that.” Natasha gestures vaguely.

After a moment, Okoye nods. “Have you heard from Nebula?”

“They made it to the jump last evening. Haven’t heard anything since. Carol left a message this morning. She’s helping to try and avert a civil war in another system. It sounded like she had things under control, but I’ll dig a little next time I get her in real time.”

“Rhodey?”

“Spending some time with Tony, so I’m staying out of it. What’s going on by you?”

“M’Baku has been aiding the Queen and what is left of the council. Our size and isolationism are making it easier here. Nakia is in Ghana, helping out. She has asked for others. I might go, at least for a bit. My role as general is…superfluous for the moment.”

“Ghana,” Natasha says quietly.

“Certain warlords are trying to take advantage of the chaos.”

It’s what Red Room Natasha would have done, in their place. She rubs a hand over her face. “Probably not just in Ghana, huh?”

“No.”

“All right. Let me know if there are resources I can lend. Just—if you need something, ask. I’ll do my best.”

There is something soft in Okoye’s eyes when she says, “I know.”

Natasha digs up a smile for her, or, well, the bastard stepchild of one. “Talk tomorrow?”

“Until then.”

* * *

It’s almost accidental that Natasha shapes the disparate players who are still in the game into a team. Or something like it. There just ends up being too many times when she’s needed to play messenger from Nebula to Carol, or Rhodey to Rocket, Carol to Okoye. Which is how the bi-weekly call-ins start.

They’re not set in stone. They can’t be, not when Nebula, Rocket, and Carol might be somewhere with a flipped schedule, Okoye might be handling business at the behest of Ramonda or M’Baku, Rhodey might be undercover, or any other of a million reasons why one of them can’t make it to the call. But all of them try, that is certain.

And it’s a routine, a point of togetherness. Natasha worries about Carol and Rhodey, essentially on their own. Okoye has the remaining Dora Milaje; Nebula and Rocket have each other. Natasha can call Steve if she really needs someone. (She wouldn’t, but that’s not the point, she _could_. And he would come. Knowing that nearly breaks her.)

Carol has people who are nearly family to her, Natasha has listened to her talk of Talos and Soren, their daughter, the son they had when it seemed they had finally found somewhere they could settle. But Natasha gets the feeling that wherever they are, it is rarely close. And she’s not certain all of them made it through the snap. She does not think they did. She’s not actually certain any of them made it. 

Rhodey…Rhodey has Tony. Tony who has hied off to a cabin by a lake with Pepper. Evidently a very pregnant Pepper. Tony, whom Rhodey cannot and will not ask for support from in this context.

So Natasha worries. It’s fruitless, but also, comforting. They are hers to worry about and they are still alive and present.

Clint is alive, too. That has become obvious. Rhodey is tracking him, because Natasha has a job, fuck it. She wrangled these people from the literal ends of the galaxy into a working force for good, and she’s not going to just disappear. No matter how much she wants to find him.

No matter how much it is she suspects she owes it to him to find him, stop him.

She ends up talking about it to Carol and Okoye, in one of the many chats they have after the others have gotten off the comms. The chats that have started to feel like Natasha’s most steady lifeline, and not just because of Okoye’s presence. “He gave me a choice. He wasn’t supposed to, but he did. And now—”

“Do you have an alternate option you can see him taking?” Carol asks. It’s soft, lacking in judgment.

_Me. This_. Natasha clenches her fists so tightly her blunted nails come close to breaking skin. “No.”

Okoye tilts her head. Natasha tenses, not sure what the other woman is thinking. All Okoye says is, “He’ll come when he’s ready.”

He won’t. She knows Clint like she knows herself. Knows he has no intention of coming back to her, of…coming back. She shuts down the line of thought because it causes panic in her. Panicking is not going to solve the situation.

Carol asks, “When’s Steve dropping by? Do you know?”

Natasha eyes her. Carol shrugs. “It seems like you shouldn’t be alone.”

_Neither should you. None of us should be._ Natasha is gathering herself up to make this point when Okoye says, “I can come to you in a couple of days. There are some things that I can’t leave to another just now, but after, I can steal some time.”

“Okoye—”

“Nat.” Okoye’s eyes are hard, but not mean, just determined. And the thing is, Natasha could get her to back down, could make it so she wouldn’t even know Natasha had exerted her will. She could, but she doesn’t want to. She wants to see Okoye, feel her skin, have her push Natasha onto the bed and lie atop her, solid and warm. Alive.

“Yeah, okay. See you then.”

Carol twitches, like maybe she wants to put her hand to the screen, allow for a mimicry of touch. She doesn’t complete the action, though, as if she’s aware it might just make things worse. Natasha places her hand in front of her, palm out. Carol takes a short breath and clenches her fists, as if to keep them at her side by force.

“We’re here,” Okoye says, placing her hand up, palm out. “We cannot be there, but we remain here.”

“Could you—” Carol stops. 

“What do you need?” Natasha asks.

Carol shakes her head. “No. Never mind. I’m not ready to know. Not for certain. Not yet.”

And Natasha understands immediately. It’s why she never just called Clint’s phone. The illusion of life is a stronger comfort than she had ever realized. 

Okoye says, “When you are, we’ll find the answers you seek.”

“Thanks.” She looks down at her fists. Her expression is uncertain, but she unfurls one of them, reaching out to complete the mirage of touch the other two are holding out.

Natasha purses her lips, even as she knows her eyes are giving away the small thrill of joy Carol’s gesture gives her. “Get some sleep.”

Carol smiles, all sharp teeth. Natasha can’t blame her.

* * *

When Okoye arrives, it feels like the first time Natasha’s breath has bottomed out in a while. She’s dizzy with the ability to take in oxygen. Okoye’s kiss is aggressive, taking some of that oxygen from her, but Natasha would give it all. She says, “Don’t let go,” between kisses, desperate and suddenly aware of how alone she’s been. It’s not that she wasn’t cognitively aware, but Natasha is good at compartmentalizing; it’s probably three-fourths of what keeps her going. 

“No,” Okoye says, and doesn’t, not until much later, when both of them are wrung out, sticky and dehydrated, and someone has to be the one to get out of bed. 

Nat says, “It’s okay,” and gently disengages, Okoye letting her escape only after they’ve met each other’s eyes, and it’s clear Nat is being genuine.

She pads to the kitchen and brings back water, one over-large glass of it. They share sips, eventually both moving toward the shower. It’s a lazy clean-up, sensual without involving sex. Afterward, Natasha drives to them to the single restaurant in driving distance that’s functioning at the moment. 

Okoye orders them each breadsticks to start with and it’s a good thing, because both of them fall on the carbs like lions that haven’t seen an antelope in over a month. After they’ve stuffed the first few in their mouths, Nat asks, “How’s Wakanda?”

“More stable than almost anywhere else.”

Natasha nods. “Makes sense. Nakia still in Ghana?”

“Unlikely to be anywhere else for a while. It’s…” After a moment she shakes her head. 

“Yeah.” Natasha is well aware just how badly systemic issues are causing failure in a number of places. There are also a number of smaller nations that were struggling before that are beginning to emerge as stronger, the grief causing a system shock akin to reviving someone after a heart attack. She both wants to be happy for those places but aches when she hears of it. Some victories are simply too Pyrrhic to be borne. (She knows it’s not her decision to make, she knows that. She doesn’t care. If she has the chance, she will make it. There are certain types of red she’ll accept in her ledger at this point.)

“I’m going to start casting a net over Africa and Eurasia. You’ll still need to handle most of the West, you and Rhodes. But I have more flexibility now.”

Natasha breathes out. “We can do that. There’re two of us. Maybe we can find someone—”

“The Dora Milaje are helping me.”

“Right, that’s. Of course they are.” Natasha quirks a self-deprecating smile. She shouldn’t need the reminder that Okoye still has a military force at her back, however reduced.

Okoye says, “Because I am not alone.”

Natasha looks away. “I have you. I have—there’s a team. We’re a team. Nebula, Rocket, Rhodey—”

“Carol,” Okoye finishes.

Looking back, feeling like she’s missing something, Natasha says, “Carol.”

“You want to talk about Carol?”

Natasha is rarely taken off guard. Then again, she doesn’t let many people inside her guard as far as Okoye is. She blinks and then considers. “I…I’d like to hear your thoughts.”

“I’m not certain they’re entirely useful. My years as a war dog taught me that the world outside Wakanda, have a very different viewpoint regarding relationship structures. Polyamory is somewhat common amongst my people. It’s not often seen where the royalty are concerned for purposes of succession, but it’s not at all unusual for the Dora Milaje to have fluid relationships. Coming up in the ranks, I would often lie in more than one woman’s bed. I don’t engage at this point because they’re my subordinates and I find that problematic. Even so, it means my basic understanding of these things is entirely different from yours.

“I’m not interested in just sex.” She doesn’t say _with either of you_ although it’s possible she should.

“What _are_ you interested in?” Okoye rests her elbows on the table and temples her fingers. “I…I see the looks that we share on our calls, I know that we all look forward to the hour or so we can steal for them, but none of us has ever acknowledged any of this, so it is not clear to me if I am even…reading the signs correctly, I suppose.”

Natasha sips at her water. Dinner arrives and interrupts her train of thought, but she goes back to it after the pleasantries have been attended to. “You’re reading my signs correctly. I want…connection, really, more than anything.”

“Love,” Okoye says, as though it is simple, a mere word without the power to build or destroy.

It is not, not for Natasha, whose view of love has been warped by her upbringing, by how she was destroyed and rebuilt by those to whose care she was entrusted. “I—I believe so.”

“Then perhaps we should try that.”

“I’m not as fearless as you are.” Natasha means for it to be a joke. It does not come out as one.

“No, but I suspect you are braver in facing your fears.”

Natasha whips her gaze up from her food to Okoye, who is watching her, waiting to see the effect of her words. “That—I don’t—”

“Take the compliment, Nat.”

It’s an order. And Natasha, for all she’s good as a solo agent, is damn good at taking orders from the people she trusts. “Brave,” she says, tasting the word, trying it out.

Okoye waits. Natasha pokes at her food. “We could talk to her. See what she thinks.”

“I don’t know about your business, but in mine, strategy usually happens one step at a time. Recon first, military action second, say.”

Natasha gives her an unimpressed look. “She isn’t an enemy fortress. Also, I don’t know if you noticed, but we have taken all of our steps out of order.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Okoye says, a smile spreading on her face. “I threatened you the first time I met you, that’s how all my best relationships have started.”

Natasha is so surprised by her own laughter it stops her in her tracks for a moment. Then she takes a breath, and uses it to start laughing again.

* * *

For all her suggestion of just coming out and having a chat with Carol, if it were left up to Natasha, she _would_ treat Carol as something to be conquered, something needing caution and strategy, as Okoye pointed out. Natasha would thread the idea into conversations, give herself time to read Carol’s reaction to these things. That’s probably why Okoye, having sussed out that Natasha actually knows better, doesn’t let her take the lead on this one. It’s possible Natasha should mind, but she doesn’t. She’s the leader of one team and that’s more than enough. Leadership had never been the role she was aiming for.

Okoye is the soldier to Natasha’s spy, steady and straightforward in a way that reminds Natasha of Steve, centered in herself in a way that is entirely Okoye’s own. She stays after one of their conferences and asks Carol, “Any chance you’ll be in the star system in the near future?”

Carol shakes her head. “Not unless you’re saying you need me to be.”

Okoye looks over at Natasha. Natasha takes the cue. “No, not need. At least not in the saving-the-world kind of way.”

Carol glances between the two of them. “You’re being weird, there’s weirdness happening.”

“Natasha’s a romantic, she’d rather have this conversation over dinner with wine.” Okoye’s tone is dry, but Natasha can hear the teasing in it.

Carol must as well because she lifts an eyebrow. “Natasha’s a romantic, huh?”

“Someone’s gotta be,” Natasha says. Clint used to say that when she’d make fun of him for the way he acted in his marriage.

“Not sure that’s entirely accurate, but sure, why are we talking about romance and taking me out to dinner?” Carol keeps the question light.

“Dumb isn’t an attractive look on you,” Okoye tells her.

“That escalated quickly,” Carol says.

“Children,” Natasha cuts in. They’re both smirking. She pins Carol with a look. “Humor aside, this isn’t a joke. Not to me.”

“I’m a billion light years away, give or take a million,” Carol says. “I don’t—”

“If you weren’t,” Okoye interjects quietly.

“Are you—” Carol eyes both of them incredulously. “Ladies, if I were within a week’s reach of you, I’d have had this thing locked down a week after I met you.”

“Pretty sure I’m the only one who’s that easy in this equation,” Natasha says.

“Want to bet on it?” Okoye asks and Carol laughs.

Natasha wants to taste that sound. She closes her eyes, takes a breath, opens them again. Both of them are watching her. “Come when you can.”

“There will always be somewhere I’m needed,” Carol says quietly.

Natasha nods at the truth of the statement. “But not always more than you’re needed here.”

Carol takes that in. She looks over at Okoye, who is simply waiting, who knows precisely when to push and even more so, when to back away. Slowly, she nods. “That’s…compelling. Romantic, even.”

“I’m good at what I do, Danvers,” Natasha tells her.

Carol smiles, her eyes dark. “That I believe.”

* * *

Natasha stays in the hospital overnight while Pepper gives birth. She can hear Tony’s voice despite being in the waiting room down the hall. Rhodey, sitting next to her, asks, “Pepper’d ask us to come get him before murdering him, you think?”

“Odds are even.”

Rhodey looks like he’s considering going and extracting his best friend, so Natasha slips her hand in his and squeezes. “Everyone’s gonna survive the night. Mom, dad, baby.”

“Stop being optimistic, it’s freaking me out.”

“My job here is done.”

Rhodey squeezes back. “How’s Okoye?”

“You were on the conference with her earlier, same as me.” Natasha frowns at him.

“I’m asking about your personal life, Nat. Like friends do.”

She might be a little off her game. “Intensely even-keeled.”

“Carol the wild card?”

Natasha laughs. “She can be. It’s not… We’re not even sure of what we’re doing, let alone how it works.” After a moment she asks, “What gave it away?”

“The way Carol smiles at the two of you.”

Natasha rocks a little. “Think Nebula and Rocket know?”

“Do you care?”

“No. But if they don’t, I’m open to taking bets on how long it takes them to figure it out.”

Rhodey laughs softly. Natasha flips the tables, asking, “You ever gonna tell Nebula you want to take her to dinner?”

Rhodey stills. After a bit he says, “Huh.”

“Oh, sorry. Didn’t meant to ruin the surprise.” She means it. She really thought he knew and just wasn’t willing to act on it for any one of a million reasons.

“No, that’s—I mean, she’s basically never in this star system, so it’s not like it’s going anywhere fast, but. Now that you’ve said it and I’m…well. You’re not wrong, as per norm, it’s something to consider.”

“You’re going to have to use so many words.” She says it lightly, but she doesn’t smile. They’re both her friends, and all of them are terrifyingly close to being broken even worse than they are.

Rhodey glances down the hall, where Pepper is definitely yelling at Tony. He says, “I’m pretty good at getting my point across.”

“Holding things together, too.”

He looks back at her. She squeezes his hand again. Leaning over to kiss her forehead, he murmurs, “I’m gonna go find coffee, you want some coffee?”

“Marry me, James Rhodes.”

“If you think I’m fighting either one of your girlfriends for _any_ reason, you got another thing coming.”

“Reasonable,” she agrees. “I’d still like that coffee.”

He stands to leave. “Text me if Stark Jr. falls out while I’m foraging.”

She gives him a thumbs up. If the kid is anywhere near as stubborn as Tony, they’ve got time.

* * *

Natasha wakes up a few months later to the smell of coffee, and frowns. She knows it’s not Okoye, who’s helping re-establish a stable governing body in Botswana. Steve’s a possibility, but he usually shows up in the evenings. 

Grabbing the gun she keeps on the nightstand, she makes her way silently to the main area. Only to blink and say, “Holy—you—” 

“Hi,” Carol says softly, looking not entirely certain of her welcome.

Natasha just manages to set the gun down on the kitchen counter before being hoisted up onto it by Carol, the two of them kissing until neither can breathe. Carol’s hands are everywhere, tugging at Natasha’s hair, learning the lines of her face, bunching into Natasha’s nightshirt. Natasha has no clue how much time has passed when she touches her forehead to Carol’s. “You didn’t mention you’d be here.”

“Wasn’t sure, didn’t want to promise anything.”

“Okoye’s—”

“I texted her when I got here. She’ll be here this evening.”

Natasha won’t pretend to be anything other than pleased by this news, but there’s no question Carol’s here for a reason. There’s too much going on and she has too much territory to cover for this to be a social call. “What’s this about, Danvers?”

“Got to the point where I needed to know.”

“Whatever it is, I would have looked into it.”

“Yeah,” Carol nods. “I know. But she’s…kinda my Clint.”

Arguably, Natasha is basically allowing Rhodey to be a go-between with Clint at the moment, but there are extenuating circumstances there, and Natasha understands Carol’s underlying point. “It’s better, anyway. We can go with you. To figure it out. If you want.”

Carol swallows. “That’d be—let’s do that.”

“Sure.”

Neither of them moves. Carol asks, “Can we just stay here? For a bit?”

Natasha has a call scheduled with Pepper, one later with Rocket and Nebula, some requisitions she’s working on, and probably at least ten things on her to-do list she’s forgetting. She says, “Long as you want.”

* * *

Okoye arrives looking as regal as ever. Natasha knows she has to be exhausted, but there’s no evidence of it in her bearing. Carol says, “Thanks,” and goes to her tip toes, leaning into Okoye, mouth up for a kiss. Natasha watches without shame. It’s indecently hot.

None of them are domestic, but Carol has evidently learned a fair amount from the Skrull family she on-and-off lives with, Okoye can do a mean cocktail, and Natasha has picked up most basics over the years. They manage a solid meal together, Carol catching them up on some intergalactic politics, Okoye telling stories about a thirteen-year-old girl who kept sneaking into the parliamentary chambers until someone made her “an intern.”

Natasha isn’t sure how she expected the sex to go with all three of them in the room. The only thing she can say with certainty is her expectations definitely did not involve falling off the bed mid-kiss with Okoye. There’s a moment of shock, where she’s not even clear on what has happened, and then she’s laughing. Carol and Okoye are a second later to join, Carol reaching over the side to haul her back into the bed. The three of them center themselves more completely, at the same time as they’re all laughing too hard to do much more than that.

When they’ve finally slowed, Carol says, “Oops,” which sets them all off again. They end up drinking in each other’s laughter with languid kisses, Natasha stroking them both off, never quite so glad for having learned to be ambidextrous, not even in all the times it has saved her life.

After her first orgasm at Natasha’s hand, Carol squirms down the bed, edging Natasha with her mouth while Okoye plays with Natasha’s breasts and forbids her to come. Natasha has never been interested in drawing out pleasure, too used to it being stolen away, never wanted to let someone else tell her what to do in bed, but the combination, the way Okoye praises her softly in Wakandan, awakens Natasha’s desire to give everything she has over to them.

They switch places after Okoye finally whispers, “Come for me,” swallowing Natasha’s moans. And then it is Carol who commands Natasha, more humor and teasing in her denials. Natasha loses all sense of time, there is nothing but want, until she is given precisely what she wants, and then more, as she watches the two of them lazily make out, discussing the taste of her on each other’s lips, their fingers reaching to give each other another couple of orgasms apiece.

There is a sort of exhausted silence for a bit before Natasha tumbles out of the bed, miraculously finding her feet this time. She goes to run the bath, and gets some water for them to drink from the nearest mini-fridge. Carol peers at her with one eye when Natasha says, “C’mon, bath time.”

Okoye makes a dismissive gesture.

Natasha says, “I put in the lime coconut bubble bath you like.”

“You’re extremely annoying,” Okoye informs her, even as she gets up and pulls Carol with her. Natasha knows who has won this round.

* * *

Monica Rambeau survived the snap. She punches Carol in the face immediately upon seeing her with a growled, “_Twenty. Four. Years_. Danvers.” 

Natasha starts toward them, ready to intervene, but they’re hugging by the time she makes it a step. Watching Carol hug is a little heart breaking, mostly for how careful she is about it. It’s not obvious on the surface; Natasha’s specialty is what lies under the surface. 

Monica pulls herself back and there’s an exchange of words Natasha is too far away to hear, but Carol nods, a tight, contained little movement of her head, her eyes tightening with loss, and Natasha knows that Monica is not the only person Carol hoped to find here. She doesn’t mean to grab at Okoye’s hand. Like so many things these days, there’s no thought, just the instinct to find warmth, comfort, life.

She suspects Okoye has the same drive, or, if not, has sympathy for the drive in Natasha, as she holds tight. Carol looks back at them, and then at Monica who glances over her shoulder. After a moment where it is clear that Monica is taking them in, she asks, “Coffee? It’s about all I’ve got, but I can put a pot on.”

“No need,” Okoye says. “We didn’t come to impose upon your hospitality.”

Monica smiles. “Wouldn’t have offered if I didn’t mean it. You brought Auntie Carol. Also, I want to hear about vibranium.”

Okoye snorts in amusement. “Coffee would be appreciated.”

Natasha is watching Carol, making sure they’re not intruding, but Carol’s glance at her is nearly desperate, afraid, it seems, that they might leave her here. Natasha frowns. It’s not as if Carol couldn’t come right back to them, or as if she would have to do anything more than call one of them for them to return.

Natasha doesn’t say anything, though, just walks into the house with the three of them, brushing slightly against Carol, who all-but crashes back into her. She tucks her free arm around Carol’s waist, and she doesn’t let go of either woman until they have to get inside the door.

Monica is already scooping grounds into a filter, four mugs lined up on a counter. 

“What is your interest in vibranium?” Okoye asks.

Monica shrugs without turning around. “Mechanical engineer. What’s _not to be interested in?”_

“She has a point,” Natasha says. Carol smiles.

Monica presses the button on the machine and turns around. She’s wearing fatigues and, in her posture, Natasha sees signs of her Air Force command rank. Her hair is scraped back into a tight, managed bun. She’s wearing bright, colorful earrings that dangle midway down her neck; they seem to clash with everything else, and yet fit her perfectly. 

Looking over at Carol, she says, “Mom thought it was amazing, you know? Mom and Nick, both. The whole thing with Wakanda. She wanted to go there more than—” She closes her eyes and swallows. “Well. It’s pretty cool, is all.”

Okoye, who had taken a seat at Monica’s kitchen table, stands and removes one of her bracelets, one of the ones beaded with vibranium. Natasha doesn’t know if the beads are meant to be used for anything other than decoration. Probably. Okoye holds out her hand and when Monica reaches out to take it, Okoye slips the bracelet on her wrist. “Learn about it for yourself. That’s what engineers like to do, yes?”

Monica blinks down at the bracelet. After a long moment she whispers, “Want cream in your coffee?”

Okoye shakes her head. “Black, but Natasha likes her cream with some coffee.”

Monica laughs a little. “There’s another joke in there.”

“Yes,” Okoye agrees.

“I like mine just right,” Carol interjects.

“That wasn’t the joke I was thinking, Goldilocks, but well played anyway,” Okoye says, returning to the table to sit down again, pulling Natasha into her lap.

Carol goes to help Monica fix the four coffees, a small, grief-filled smile on her face. Monica leans into her and for a long time, no coffee is poured. Nobody says a word.

* * *

Natasha wakes from a nightmare that’s just fragments and disconnected images that make very little sense but pack more than enough emotional punch to have her deciding sleep isn’t going to happen again, not tonight. The need to hunt down Clint and make him look at her, make him stop, make him _come fucking back_ is singing through her veins. Since she can’t do a damn thing about that, and she can’t sleep, she’ll find some other form of distraction. She’s behind in her emails anyway.

She responds to a few from Rocket, one from Pepper with picture of Morgan and Tony, one from Nebula, and finally one from Carol, which is nothing more than a new joke she’s come across. Natasha spends some time finding a funny meme to respond with and sends that. No sooner has she hit the send button than the comm is ringing.

She answers and Carol says, “It’s ass o’ clock by you.”

“Mm. Don’t really want to talk about it.” The sick sensation of failing engendered by the nightmare is still in the pit of her stomach, chased by the gut-punch feeling of having failed Clint. She’s glad the images didn’t coalesce, that there was no real sense to the dream. This is bad enough.

“Sure. Heard from Monica at all?”

“Central sent her down to Texas for a bit to handle some construction-related chaos. She just gave me the broad outlines. Said she’d be on email, though, so if she’s not answering, I can see if I can—”

“No, she’s answering, I’m just not sure she’d tell me if there was something wrong and you’re better at reading between the lines.”

Natasha blinks at the bald statement of her person-reading strengths. 

Carol rocks on her heels. “What?”

Natasha makes patterns in the table with her fingertips. “Okoye and you, you don’t pretend I’m not who I am. Most people, with me, they notice the parts that are useful, but don’t talk about them or bring them up, because then you have to think about how I came to be that way, and what I’ve done with those abilities and it’s not pretty. I’m not pretty, not in that way. But the two of you don’t find it ugly. It’s just factual with you.”

“You’re saying that you like that we don’t judge you for mistakes you made a literal lifetime ago, over all the conscious choices you’ve made in the lifetime since, and that’s what makes us special.” Carol’s voice is flat. It’s not exactly angry, but it’s bordering it.

“I’m saying there’s a reason this—you, _you_ mean something more than somewhere to rest in this fucking shitstorm of a trash can universe we’re living in.”

“Nat.”

Natasha shakes her head. “Just. It just matters, that’s all.”

Maybe it matters more because she misses Clint, she misses Steve and Tony and Sam and Bruce and everyone in her fucking family that she scraped together and held with her bloody, raw hands. She misses the friendship she was piecing together with Bucky over their history, over their broken parts. She misses the life she fought for time and time again. All she knows is, it matters.

Softly, Carol asks, “Want me to tell you another joke? I picked up a few this week.”

Natasha laughs. It hurts a little in the center of her chest, her throat, but she does it. “Yeah. Yeah, please.”

* * *

Crushing grief, Natasha finds, is much like most emotions. Live with it long enough, and it becomes a piece of you, but one you know how to carry, how to work with enough that when you wake up, it cannot keep you pinned to the bed, cannot fill you so that there is no room for breakfast, cannot keep one foot from moving in front of the other. 

Once she has reached that place, time becomes easier to manage. Days are not a meter by which anything can be measured, minutes and hours and seconds are not even thoughts. What matters is chunks. Has it been more than a month since she’s seen Okoye? If the answer is yes, find her, and go to her.

Has Natasha touched Carol in the last six months? If the answer is no, threaten to send Rocket to annoy her. Or tell her Monica misses her. She will know what Natasha is really saying.

Has Steve stopped by the house within the last quarter? If no, drive down to the city and make him go out to dinner with her. 

Has Monica sent an update in the last two weeks? If no, figure out what base she’s at, and make certain she’s getting enough vitamin D. Or something.

Has Pepper sent a picture of Morgan in a week or so? If not, call. Call and ask questions and listen to the answers. Ask about Tony and trust Pepper to tell the truth.

Every four months, she sends an email to Bruce that reads simply, “Need anything?” and every four months he responds, “Miss you.”

Every two months, she sends an email to Korg, who is evidently Thor’s secretary now. It says, “How are you? How is he?”

In response she will receive an hour-long rambling phone call about video games. She’s pretty certain it means they’re okay. She hopes.

The rest of the time she carefully keeps tabs on Rhodey, Rocket, and Nebula, all of whom seem to at least be standing, moving, breathing. That’s all Natasha needs. Or, well, she will make it all she needs. She will live with that the same way she lives with the grief.

And the world keeps turning, no matter how much it seems that the sheer force of their loss, the resultant pain, should halt it in its tracks. Days, hours, minutes, seconds.

* * *

Three days before Scott Lang shows up on the Compound’s doorstep and everything in the world shifts violently, Okoye tilts her head and says, “Maybe we should go somewhere.”

Natasha blinks. “Go somewhere? I don’t—to Carol?”

“I was thinking more along the lines of the Seychelles, but there are probably beaches halfway across the galaxy.”

“Oh.” Natasha rubs a hand over her face. “A vacation.”

“People take them.”

Admittedly, tourism hasn’t been quite the industry it was Before. Airlines had to consolidate, many of the larger resorts have been left to rot, but that’s also allowed for small, local operations to flourish. Supply lines are still getting their footing back in just about every industry. Even so, people are making it work. “Yeah, just—I haven’t.”

Okoye waits. Then asks, “Ever?”

It’s not judgmental. Natasha feels it, though, the way it defines her as different. Sure, lots of people can’t afford to go on trips, and some just don’t like to travel, but both of them know neither of those excuses work with her. “The Red Room wasn’t really—travel was mostly for business, you know? And then I was safe with SHIELD and at first it was about being wary of leaving and then later, about not being sure the leave policy _really_ applied to defector assassins. And then, I dunno. Things were busy.”

“And you’re terrible at being kind to yourself.”

It’s the truth, so Natasha doesn’t respond to that. Instead, she offers a flippant, “Hey, I saved one kind of virginity for you, look at that.”

Okoye laughs, which means Natasha’s off the hook for the moment. If there’s one thing Okoye can be counted on to do, it’s to dig at a problem until there’s a crater, or she’s tunneled right through to the other side. They’ll discuss it again, and Natasha will probably have to admit she’d never known how to ask someone to go with her, and never particularly wanted to go on her own. For now, though, she can ask, “The Seychelles, huh?”

“I’ve never been, but M’Baku says it’s his favorite place to thaw out for a bit. He was persuasive.”

“Could be nice.”

Okoye smiles. “It will be.”


	2. Chapter 2

By the time Carol finds Okoye in the aftermath of the fight—Okoye, who is whole, streaked with the blood of her enemies, and so fucking fierce Carol can hardly look straight at her—she’s panicked. “Where’s Natasha? Where is she? I haven’t—”

Okoye is already running, though, past Carol toward a guy Carol has only ever seen in pictures with Natasha, but she knows who it is immediately. Clint. Natasha’s absent, platonic, other half. The one Carol has thought, on more than one occasion, should pull his shit together and come be there for his best friend who was still fucking alive, but she’s also pretty sure Maria has felt like that about her more than once over the years. Monica certainly has.

_Maria._

Carol shoves that thought aside. She’ll catch up with making sure Maria and Fury are all right as soon as she’s figured out where Natasha is.

She catches up to Okoye as Clint is explaining Vormir in quiet, broken syllables. Carol has experienced her only living parent’s disdain, dismissal from a slew of commanding officers, having what she knew to be her whole life ripped away from her twice. She has spent the last twenty-four years as someone welcomed into but still on the fringes of communities that belong entirely to others.

This is new. Hearing’s Clint’s unsteady words, the realization that even now, now when they have fucking _won_ that the one fucking person who truly deserves to be here, to see it, isn’t here. That Carol can’t taste victory on Natasha’s lips, hear the unbelieving laugh she knows would have rested in Natasha’s lungs for days, weeks, after this.

She walks. She has no idea where she’s going. There’s undoubtedly so much to do. This—bringing all these people back, it’s going to be chaos, there will have to be a way to—

But none of it matters, and she can’t focus on it. Can’t focus on anything. It feels like having the wind knocked out of her, only she can’t get it back. The trick, she knows, is not to panic. That does not feel useful in this instance, when panic is the only thing between her and grief, with all its insipient rage and helplessness.

She almost lets loose with her power at the touch of hands on her shoulders. Okoye squeezes, though, and Carol knows that specific application of strength. Carol opens her mouth to say something, and all that comes out is a scream. Okoye doesn’t let go. She says, “Breathe.”

“I can’t,” Carol chokes out.

“Do it anyway.”

* * *

They bury the dead. Carol escorts the bodies where they need to go and digs manually for much of it, not tiring the way she needs. Fury is with her at one point, Okoye for some of it. Okoye is helping to oversee the memorial rites for the Wakandans, who are being buried in Wakanda, where the digging is being done largely by machinery. Strange’s people, and some of the Asgardians, have to be taken to their families if they have any. Their graves are the ones Carol creates, just her body and a shovel. Her body is all the machinery anyone could ever need. 

All things considered, the casualties are minor. That fact has never seemed less important.

She goes to Maria because she does not know where else to go, even though it’s not fair. Maria takes one look at her and says, “Fuck,” pulling Carol to her. She’s twenty-four years older, back from being dead for five years, and even stronger than Carol remembers. 

Okoye finds her there, sitting at the kitchen table not eating. She isn’t hungry, can’t remember being hungry. There’s a glass in front of her with water, but she won’t touch it, afraid she’ll shatter it, not trusting her own strength. 

Carol says, “Guess I’m kind of predictable, huh?”

“That, and you have an energy signature the size of the African continent. Shuri says she could track you by the smell of your power.”

Carol draws a breath in. “Shuri. Right.” Until now, Shuri has been a product of the past, known only from Okoye’s stories and the few things the internet can tell Carol. 

Maria walks into the kitchen and without so much as missing a step, says, “You’re the Wakandan General.”

“Monica let me in.” Okoye stands to shake hands with Maria.

“Thanks for…saving the world, I guess.”

Okoye shakes her head. Carol is watching, so she sees all the things that happen in that single shake. Sees the fracture lines in Okoye she’s been scared to notice. “Maria, can we—you got a bed to spare for a few hours?”

Maria rolls her eyes. “I’ll even put fresh sheets on it.”

* * *

Okoye does something with a bead worn around her neck and Carol sleeps as she hasn’t since the battle. She comes up from it slowly. Okoye is warm against her, which helps, but even without space left for her, Carol can feel Natasha missing between them.

_One person. One person for—_ Carol doesn’t care what it was for, what the bargain was. She has no doubt Natasha thought it was absolutely worthwhile. Natasha was wrong. 

Okoye kisses her neck. “Fury, Maximoff, and Barton arrived about an hour ago. Maria’s been keeping them busy. Monica was called back. Rhodey says anyone who’s been around for the past five years is basically working around the clock. He was surprised she managed twenty-four hours leave.”

Carol nods. “Know what they’re here for?”

“Unless it’s to talk about cats, no. That’s definitely what they were doing when I got something to drink a while ago.”

Carol blinked. “Any cat in particular?”

“It’s your tentacled friend. Do you ever wonder if he had the powers you have while storing the Tesseract?”

“Fuck, I hope not, Flerkens have enough of a natural defense system.”

“Mm.” Okoye’s hand makes its way up and down Carol’s back without any hurry. “We can stay here, you know?”

Carol does know that. She also knows putting conversations off only means having to have them later. Burying her face in Okoye’s shoulder, she shakes her head. “C’mon.”

Okoye glides out of bed, smooth as always. Carol doesn’t understand how it’s possible she’s human. Carol is a superpowered human and she still manages to trip over her own feet from time to time. Okoye pulls Carol to her feet and the two of them grab some clothes. Carol ends up in the yellow shirt Okoye was wearing the day before, Okoye in Maria’s Saints shirt.

They walk into the living room, where the others are gathered. Maria looks up and says, “Coffee in the pot, if you want.”

“I love you,” Carol tells her, and it’s unduly sincere, but given the circumstances, she’s not too bothered by that. She pours herself and Okoye a cup each and comes back, sitting between Okoye and Maria on the sofa. Barton and Maximoff are on the love seat across from them, with Fury in the lone armchair. 

After an awkward moment, Barton says, “She told me she had something important to tell me. When we—after. You were it, weren’t you?”

“Shouldn’t you be with your family?” Okoye asks, and the question is as mild as can be, but Carol knows that tone. Murder is imminent.

“I deserve that,” Barton says. He doesn’t look away or down, though. “I sure as fuck didn’t deserve her. But my kids are asking where their Aunt Nat is buried, and why there hasn’t been a funeral and I—I can’t give her anything else.”

“Can’t give her that much,” Okoye corrects.

“I think we can,” Maximoff says.

Carol focuses on her. She hasn’t thought much about her, really. Carol can _feel_ her powers, like calling to like, she supposes, but there’s nothing threatening about the feeling; it’s more background noise than anything. For the first time, looking at her now, Carol realizes just how young she is. Carol doubts she’s older than twenty.

Okoye settles just slightly, more than she has since walking in the room, at least. “Oh?”

Maximoff looks at Carol. “We’re both…forged from the stones.”

Carol makes a so-so motion with her hand, gesturing for Maximoff to keep talking. Maximoff curls her knees up, hooking her arms around them. “I think we can pull her from the soul realm.”

“Why? I mean…what leads you to believe that?”

Maximoff tilts her head. “You can feel me, can you not?”

Carol nods and feels more than sees Okoye’s slow blink. 

“I think the stones are connected. Some remnant of their origin, maybe, who knows? But I think they are linked. And I believe if we can form a link with the soul stone, we can venture into the realm Clint describes. Nebula is fairly certain, after having looked over every log and other artifact she could find from Thanos, that the body will be in that realm.”

It’s thin. For all they know, there is no body. There’s no clear entrance or exit to where they’re going, which presents the risk of getting stuck, should they even manage to get in. Carol can think of a billion reasons they shouldn’t do this. She’s opening her mouth to agree anyway when Okoye says, “We need a moment,” and strides out of the room.

Carol stands up and follows her out to the porch, closing the door behind them.

“This is stupid,” Okoye says flatly. “Her body is not her. There is no reason to take this chance for a _thing_ when her spirit is elsewhere.”

Carol stares at the ground. Okoye’s right. There’s no arguing that this is not worth either the necessary resources or the risk. But, “I need—I can’t leave her there. If there’s a chance I could—just. She gave her life for this planet. Yes, she knew other planets were affected, but this is the one she sacrificed everything for, and I want her to rest here. Even if it’s just so I can feel better. So Barton’s kids have a gravestone to visit.”

Okoye turns toward the front lawn. “I had her and you. Now I only have you and you want me to say it’s okay for you to take unnecessary risks with yourself?”

“Okoye.” Carol says it softly and waits for Okoye to turn back to her. When she gets what she’s waiting for, she says, “Our lives are about risk. Necessary, unnecessary, there will never be a time when one of us isn’t going to have to worry, somewhere inside, that the other won’t come back at the end of the day.”

“She wouldn’t want this. She would tell you—”

“I know.” And Carol does. But Natasha never valued herself enough, and, “She gave up the right to have an opinion on this when she fought Barton to go over that cliff.”

“Fuck,” Okoye says, and walks away. Carol lets her go. She’ll come back.

* * *

Carol borrows a ship from a government one galaxy over that owes her…well, more than enough to lend her a ship. They offer to loan her a few warriors with the ship. She thanks them and passes. If she and Maximoff aren’t enough to handle this, she sincerely doubts much of anything is going to tip things in their favor.

She has suited up with Maximoff and Barton, Banner set to handle the controls for the time jump, when Okoye slips into the compound and says, “I’m going with you.”

They haven’t spoken in three days. While Carol’s been coordinating things with Maximoff, Banner, Fury, and Barton, Okoye has been in Wakanda, Carol knows that. She hasn’t lost track of her. She’s just been letting her come around on her own time.

Carol smiles and says, “Yeah, your suit’s in the box over there.”

Okoye looks mildly frustrated at being predictable, but she goes and dons the jumpsuit. The four of them walk out to the platform and Banner says, “General. Nice to see you.”

“Dr. Banner.”

There’s a guy with his hair in a messy man-bun with a prosthetic arm made from vibranium whom Carol vaguely remembers seeing both in the fight and at Stark’s funeral. Okoye blinks and approaches him, “Wolf.”

Barton clasps the flesh forearm of the man, the gesture just a tad more intimate than a traditional handshake. Man-Bun glances over at Okoye.

“General,” he says with a respectful dip of his head. “Don’t suppose you need some infantry?”

Okoye looks over her shoulder at Maximoff, who crosses to them. There are considerable gaps in Carol’s understanding of the dynamics, here. She’s aware that Maximoff, Rogers and his best friend, who’s probably this guy, were all fugitives for the same year and change Natasha was, prior to Thanos, and Okoye has mentioned that the two women came in and out of the country to pick up Rogers when needed, and spend time with the best friend, Barnes. That’s where her awareness of the ties that bind here ends. All she knows is that there were enough ties that Natasha found it difficult to speak about these two. Not as difficult as in the case of Barton, but enough that Carol hadn’t wanted to push. There was way, way too much space for Natasha to push back. 

Maximoff’s doll-like next to the two of them, but the man tips his head down to touch his forehead to hers. “Hey, Wanda.”

“Bucky,” she says quietly. “It’s just her body. That’s all.”

There’s a twist of his mouth, a tightening in his jaw, and he says, “More than I’ve got now.”

Maximoff pulls away and turns to Carol. “Captain Danvers—”

“Carol,” she corrects. She hasn’t had a true rank for over half her life at this point.

“Carol,” Maximoff agrees, “this is Bucky. He and Natasha…”

“Had history,” Barton supplies.

Suddenly, Carol wishes she’d actually been the creeper she was trying not to be and Googled all the people Natasha had told stories about. All she knows about this man is a smattering of his secret kindnesses to Natasha in her training years, which according to Natasha, had shaped who she would become, and the fact that they were rebuilding a connection during their time as fugitives. It’s not a lot. “Hi Bucky.”

He holds out his flesh hand. “Carol.”

She shakes it. “Let’s do this, yeah?”

* * *

Barton leads them over the cold-swamp geography of Vormir. Under different circumstances, Carol is certain she would find the planet peaceful, in an austere way. Given the circumstances at hand, it looks like a hellscape. Which is not helped by the dude with the skull-face or the fact that Bucky kind-of-sort-of loses his shit at seeing the guy. For a second, Carol’s pretty sure she’s going to get hurled on, given the pale-green tint of Bucky’s skin. Barton, for his part, says, “Oh. You again.”

Skeleton-dude doesn’t seem to have much emotion about Bucky or Barton, all things being equal. He murmurs, “You have not come for the stone.”

“Fuck the stone,” Bucky says. “And fuck you.”

“Seconded,” Barton mutters.

Maximoff puts a hand to Barton’s lower back, and Carol notes it actually calms him somewhat. Bucky’s still about to come out of his skin, so Carol decides to see if they can get this part over with quickly and says, “We’ve come to reclaim our dead.”

“That is not possible,” Red Fuckface informs her.

“Okay,” she says, and walks past him, comfortable the others are going to follow in her wake. Once they’re at the edge of the cliff, Ghostest-With-The-Mostest hovering like a bat a few yards behind them, Carol asks, “Ideas?”

Maximoff tilts her head. “Can’t you feel it?”

Carol frowns and gives the question some consideration. She’s been paying attention to Bucky, to Barton, to Faceless Asshat, to anything that isn’t her own emotions, so it takes a second, but once she’s paying attention, she knows exactly what Maximoff is talking about. The power in the air is startling, really. She’s only felt it once before and she doesn’t really remember getting hit with the full force of the Tesseract, but there’s some sense-memory left over.

Carol holds out her hands to Maximoff, admitting, “I’m not sure what I’m doing here, but—”

Maximoff nods, taking her hands. She looks at Bucky, Barton, and Okoye and says, “You might want to latch on. This…is probably not an exact science.”

Okoye fits herself behind Carol, half-embrace, half-defensive position. Bucky does something very similar to Maximoff, which makes Barton side-eye them. Maximoff blinks and Bucky looks down, seeming a little surprised himself, but neither moves. After a second, Barton tucks himself into Maximoff and Bucky’s side. Carol takes a breath and asks, “On three?”

“Just…tap in, yes?”

“Unless you’ve got something better.”

Maximoff shakes her head. “On three. Your count.”

“One.”

* * *

“No.”

Carol blinks and they must have succeeded because they’re not where they were before, so she says, “Yes,” without really clocking that Okoye wasn’t the one to speak. Nor was Bucky, Barton, or Maximoff. 

Okoye, though, must catch on immediately, because when Carol looks over at her she’s staring, wide-eyed off to the side. Carol follows her gaze to where Natasha is saying, “No, this isn’t—no, you aren’t supposed to be here. What did you _do_?”

The last word is a panicked wail more than anything else. Okoye and Barton both make a move toward Natasha who backs away, desperation in every line of her body, and it is Bucky who says, “We won, Natashka. We won. And we came to get you.”

“We were expecting…” Maximoff shakes her head. “We came for you.”

Carol can’t take her eyes off Natasha, can’t focus enough to ask questions she should probably ask. Okoye is the one to manage, “We came for your body.”

Natasha steps toward them, just one step. “We won.”

“Thanos is dead,” Carol says. “His army with him.”

“We lost Tony,” Barton says. Carol is glad. Someone had to say it. She prefers it be someone who had an emotional tie to Stark, the way Natasha does.

Natasha sits down, just crumples to the ground, and fuck this. Carol goes and sits next to her, providing somewhere for her lean. Okoye is right there, grounding them. Barton sinks behind her, curling over her back.

Natasha looks past Maximoff to Bucky, who gives her an odd smile. She must have some idea of what it means, because she frowns down at the ground. Then, “But still, you shouldn’t be here.”

Softly, Maximoff says, “I’m not sure _you_ should be here.” 

Natasha nods. “The stone—I think we confused it?”

“We confused it,” Barton repeats, his voice flat, unreadable. 

She presses herself backward into him. “It’s never had someone willingly sacrifice themselves, let alone so the other person could use the stone for a purpose that didn’t really involve having power over others. It was _definitely_ confused by our fight, it—it wanted to keep you, too, only, it actually has, uh. Rules? I guess. That it can’t break. But we kinda broke them, and I was relieved I won and I could _feel_ that it didn’t know what to do with that, with me. Still doesn’t. It consumes the souls of the unwittingly sacrificed, as far as I can tell, but I don’t think it _can_ take mine.” 

“You think there are limits on its power?” Carol asks. For all that she’s powered by one of these things, her knowledge is probably not what it should be. She might need to change that.

Natasha shrugs. “Or maybe it just chooses not to, I don’t know, what I do know is that you shouldn’t be able to be in this realm. Nobody should be able to. Well, maybe Clint, but I don’t even think then, or the stone would have taken him, too.”

Carol shrugs. “Nobody should survive being as close to an engine as I was when I blew it up, let alone a Tesseract-powered engine.”

“I shouldn’t have survived the fall from the train,” Bucky says. Carol _really_ needs more fucking context for everything.

“I probably shouldn’t have survived what Hydra was doing to me and Pietro,” Maximoff says.

“Shouldn’t have survived you,” Barton murmurs into Natasha’s hair.

“I just thought going to space sounded fun,” Okoye says, her eyes still on Natasha. 

It chokes a laugh from Natasha. She reaches out a hand and shakily touches Okoye’s face. “I—I don’t know if I can leave here. I don’t know if I’m actually alive.”

Carol looks over at Okoye, who just looks back. It’s a terrifying thought. Carol swallows and makes herself say, “It’s your choice. We won’t drag you from here. If you want to try, though, we’ll take you. We’ll take the chance.”

Natasha rolls her eyes. “Of course I’m going to try, are you—I just needed to make sure we were all on the same page.”

Maximoff cants her head. “You said you can feel the stone?”

Natasha looks over at her. “Well, I can feel what I think is the stone. It wasn’t there before I was here, that’s…that’s all I know for sure.”

“How do you feel it?”

Natasha closes her eyes, leaning further into Okoye, who soothes a hand down Natasha’s side. “Whisper isn’t the right word, exactly, but it’s like a whisper in my mind. It’s more sensation than sound.”

Carol looks over at where Bucky and Maximoff are still standing, their shoulders touching. “What are you thinking?”

“What if the stone has…she thinks the stone consumes the others, right? What if she has consumed some element of the stone? We were able to pull through to this side because of our connection with it. Maybe that will work both ways.” She breaks off, chewing at her lower lip. Bucky brings his flesh arm cautiously around her and she settles slightly at the contact. 

“Think I got any cool powers out of it?” Natasha asks, her eyes still closed. She sounds exhausted. Carol wonders if she needs sleep in here, and if she does, if she’s able to manage it. 

“I’ll take you having survived falling off a cliff,” Barton tells her.

Natasha opens her eyes to smile and steal a kiss off Okoye. “Guess that’s fair.”

* * *

Carol’s not an optimist, nor has she ever played one on TV. Frankly, she’s more than a little surprised that not only do they make it back to the surface of Vormir relatively easily, that she’s not holding Natasha’s corpse when they do. The relief is so intense, though, it feels closer to nausea. 

Maybe Natasha sees that, or maybe she’s feeling the same way, but she sways into Carol, their foreheads touching, and she says, “Hey. I’m. We made it.”

They’re all touching anyway, since Bucky, Barton, and Okoye haven’t got the juice to get them through the separate worlds themselves. It quickly becomes a group hug, even Okoye holding tightly, her hand around Carol’s bicep, squeezing hard enough that were Carol destructible, she might have bruises. Carol knows people are saying words. Nothing is really registering, though, aside from the visceral reality of having Natasha in her arms.

Natasha says, “I want to go home.”

Bucky’s the one to say, “New problem.”

This one, though, the fact that they were planning on bringing back a body, which could be carried, rather than a person, who needs a suit and the necessary tech to get back, is pretty easily solved with a quick back and forth by Bucky, who brings them what they need.

The second they’re back on the platform, Banner is saying, “Holy shit,” even though, presumably, Bucky explained when he came back for the suit and the particles. 

Natasha says, “I want coffee. And grilled cheese. With Havarti on focaccia.”

Barton says, “Anything you want, I’m gonna—”

He’s off, presumably to find what she’s asked for. Carol asks, “No good takeout in the soul realm?”

“I would honestly trade you away for a quality pint of bourbon pecan ice cream.”

“Let’s just see if we can find a store with some available before we take any drastic measures, yeah?” Bucky asks.

“Sure, fine, whatever,” Natasha says, even as she reaches out and buries her hand in Carol’s hair, the other hand clasping onto Okoye’s hand. “Who’s a girl gotta blow to get a shower around here, huh?”

“I can come up with a list,” Okoye tells her, and starts toward the inside of the compound. Carol follows easily enough that she doesn’t even end up getting her hair pulled.


	3. Chapter 3

Natasha showers longer than she thinks she ever has in her life, drinks two cups of coffee, eats the sandwich Clint makes her—he can only find ciabatta and smoked provolone; she announces she’s willing to compromise—and the full pint of butter pecan (Wanda informs her it was the closest thing they could find) Bucky and Wanda bring back from the grocery store. It’s weird eating again. She didn’t miss it while she was…dead? In the stone? Whatever she was. She missed the _idea_ of it, the taste of things, but it wasn’t as if she’d been starving.

Well, not for food. She hasn’t let Carol or Okoye step out of her range of touch since her return. She’d known, intellectually, that she was lonely. Time passed differently where she was in that it didn’t exactly pass. The human mind, though, has some sense of linear motion. And for all that she could hear the murmurs of the stone inside of her, its desires, its needs, its confusion, she’d been alone.

Thankfully, neither Carol nor Okoye so much as raises an eyebrow when she says, mid-shower, “I need you to, uh, not stop touching me. Just. For a bit.”

She eats sitting on Okoye’s lap, Carol’s feet tangled in hers, listening to Bucky and Clint catch her up. She almost falls asleep, coffee or no, listening. Carol must notice because she says, “It can wait.”

Natasha forces herself to wake up enough to look carefully at Bruce, who is sipping coffee out of soup tureen. He smiles at her, shy and maybe a little sad. She’ll need to talk with him about where he’s going, what he’s doing next. About Tony. It can wait though.

Tony will still be dead. She breathes through the pain of that thought until it’s more bruise than stab wound, at least for the moment.

Fury is standing against the counters, outside the discussion, watching, always watching. He catches her glance and gives her a knowing look. He seems calm enough, though.

Clint is still frantic, probably will be until she can beat him into a mat and make him talk, tell him she’s not sorry, tell him she loves him, tell him to go home to his damn family. Bucky looks tired and uncertain. Sam’s evidently going to be here in the next couple of days, he’d needed to check in with some people. That’s when Natasha will figure out what Bucky means when he says that Steve’s around just not around. 

Wanda, though, Wanda looks quietly intent. She’s been orbiting around Bucky, and it’s not that her grief isn’t there, Natasha would be able to see it even if she didn’t know Wanda the way she does. But Wanda has learned how to lose people, more so than anyone should ever have to, and Natasha can see that she has a game plan for moving forward this time. Natasha will see if she can help with that later.

For now, it’s probably all right to sleep for a bit. She doesn’t think she slept in the soul realm, either, although, her recall of the time in there is hard to explain in words that relate to the outside world and how it works. All she knows is that her body wants to curl into the warmth of Okoye and Carol—for once without it feeling like they are on borrowed time—and dream.

She nods, lets Okoye pull her out of the chair she’s in. Carol somehow hoists her into a piggyback ride and Natasha laughs for the shock of it, the playfulness that feels easier than it ever has, doesn’t feel like something they’re all forcing so they don’t forget how to be human.

She’s still laughing when she gets thrown on the bed and says, “Mmm, raincheck?”

Carol laughs, too. “Yeah, I think I can forego you falling asleep while I’m eating you out, thanks.”

Natasha cuddles into them, her mouth pressed to Okoye’s shoulder, Carol’s warmth lining her back, and says, “I love you,” falling asleep without bothering to hear an answer. They came and brought her back from the dead. Natasha is all about subtext.

* * *

Natasha sleeps for the better part of two days, waking up mostly to drink water voraciously and relieve herself. At some point Clint is with her, at another, Bucky and Wanda, and, when she wakes up in a way that feels less temporary, Rhodey.

She says, “Hey,” and wraps herself around him tightly enough it’s probably uncomfortable. He doesn’t complain, just retaliates in kind. She mumbles, “I’m sorry, I, Rhodey, I’m sorry about Tony. I’m sorry.”

He shakes his head. She asks, “Nebula?”

“Out with Quill, finding her sister. We’re in touch. I couldn’t leave right now.”

“No, of course. There’re Pepp and Morgan.”

“Yeah.”

“What can I do?”

Rhodey huffs. “Don’t fucking die on me again. Not cool, Romanoff.”

“Job description,” Natasha retorts, but it’s gentle, careful.

He makes a noise of discontent. “We all deserve to retire, don’t you think? I dunno if anybody’s mentioned, but Tony left every single one of the original team, plus Wanda and Sam, a measly hundred million each to do with as you wish.”

There’s a weird silence in her mind, then, like the inside of a shell when there’s no ocean to be heard. “I—what?”

“Nat—”

She has to get up. She’s not thinking, just that she can’t be still. Legs that haven’t really done anything in days, weeks, she doesn’t even know, buckle beneath her as she tries to slide out of the bed and Rhodey goes, “Stop, Jesus.”

Clint had told her, he’d said Tony was dead, and she’d listened and processed that information, but evidently the grief had been waiting, a sniper in its perch, because it hits Natasha the same way bullets have in the past, slipping under her skin and waiting for when her brain can actually process the pain. She’s on her hands and knees on the floor, Rhodey talking to her, but she can’t hear, not really.

Rhodey puts a hand to her face and says, “Hey.”

It shouldn’t be Rhodey who has to do this. The thought comes to her, floating across her mind, a boat of lucidity in a raging ocean of shock and pain. She keens. It’s not just for herself, although there’s that. Because she never even said she was sorry to Tony, not really, for telling him she was on his side and then deciding otherwise. She’d never said, “Morgan looks like you,” or “You’re such a good dad,” or all the shit she’d been meaning to say at some point, when she thought he was ready to listen.

It’s for the rest of them, too, though. For Pepper, Rhodey, Morgan. For Sam who’s never going to get to really be on a team with Tony, and Wanda who will always have mixed feelings about him. For Bucky who’s never going to get to truly reconcile with him, which she always believed was possible, and Carol, who’s not going to have the chance to actually know him. 

There’s screaming, and it must be her, must be, since Clint is there, suddenly, dragging her off the floor and into his arms, Rhodey still there, anchoring her in the back. Okoye comes running, Carol not far behind. She loses track after that, too busy trying to have some semblance of control. It takes a while. She’s not sure how long, only that when she has managed, she’s sitting on the bed, shaking like a leaf, surrounded by people she loves far, far too much for safety.

Her throat hurts, and when she tries to say, “Sorry,” it cracks at the syllable.

“Job description,” Rhodey says quietly.

It hurts to laugh, but she does it anyway.

* * *

There’s a lot to do at the compound. For one thing, the team needs a re-org. There’s an unholy amount of non-super superheroing that needs doing in terms of supply lines, government support, emotional support, and generally trying to make sure things stabilize somewhat. Natasha wouldn’t undo what they’ve done, but she can acknowledge it’s caused a bit of a mess. Or, you know, a big one. 

Still, when Okoye says, “Come back to Wakanda with me for a few days,” Natasha doesn’t even think before agreeing. She’s not quite ready to go back to only seeing her lovers every few months, or, in Carol’s case, sometimes longer.

They drop Clint off at home before heading toward Wakanda. Natasha spends the evening with Laura and the kids. Carol, Okoye, and Clint sit on the porch for a bit. Natasha suspects, from the looks both women give her, not to mention Clint’s demeanor, there has been a fair amount of shovel talking in all directions. It’s a bit late, all things being equal. Nice thought, though.

In the morning she makes blueberry pancakes with Laura, who taught her how in the first place. Carol eats a frankly alarming number, and Natasha can tell Lila has found a new hero. Before she gets on the ship, Clint pulls Natasha aside and says, “Call when you get there, okay?”

Without really meaning to, she says, “I’m not the one who disappeared.”

He holds her gaze, though. “I know. I know, Tash. And I—there’s no way for me to make that one up to you. No way to undo everything that’s been done, or I swear to everything either of us has ever held true, I’d try. For you. I’d try.”

She smiles, wry and understated. “I know. That’s the bitch of it.”

His laugh is pained, and he’s still watching her, waiting for something. She kisses his forehead. “I’ll call when I get there, promise.”

“Love you,” he whispers. She squeezes his hand, and goes to get on the ship.

* * *

T’Challa is at the landing pad when they arrive. It loosens yet another knot in Natasha’s chest to see him, alive and smiling and even perhaps a bit serene. He nods at Okoye. “General.”

She gives the traditional Wakandan gesture of greeting. T’Challa turns to Natasha and there’s a moment where both of them hesitate before Natasha mutters, “Fuck it,” and hugs him. He reciprocates after a fleeting second of hesitation, lifting her off the ground. She asks, “Have you met Carol?”

“Yes, but only briefly.” He pulls back. “Dinner tonight, that’s absolutely an order from Wakanda’s king.”

Okoye manages to look both unimpressed and obedient all at once. It’s a skill. 

Carol salutes unironically, which almost makes Natasha laugh. She manages not to at the last second. Instead she tells him, “Better get cooking,” which makes him laugh, warm and full-bodied. He shakes his head at her and heads off, leaving the three of them alone.

Okoye raises an eyebrow at her. “Rhinos?”

“It’s like you know me, or something.”

The three of them spend the afternoon going through drills with the war rhinos. Or, well, Okoye goes through drills, Carol and Natasha get in the way and are unapologetic about it. Finally, though, Natasha kisses the snout of her favorite rhino, and says, “Shower before dinner. Knowing T’Challa, he invited his mom and sister and I’m not dining with the entire royal family of Wakanda smelling like rhino shit.”

Okoye takes them back to her quarters, where they shower. It’s the first time they’ve had real privacy since Natasha has come back. Or, no, since she’s been back and interested in more than food and a soft bed. She puts her head under the stream and then pulls forward, kissing Okoye with wet lips. “Mind being a little later to dinner?”

Okoye must not, because she pins Natasha to the wall of the shower. Natasha considers fighting, thinks about how good it is to have someone whom she can push back against, how hot it is when one of them is willing to bend to the other. She finds, though, that right now all she wants is the contact, whatever Okoye wants of her will be enough, will be good. Carol leans against the wall next to her. Okoye and Carol kiss around her, and Natasha makes a needy, desperate sound.

It’s unintentional, the sound, and she flushes, partly in surprise, but a little bit in embarrassment. Carol draws out of the kiss to whisper in Natasha’s ear, “Oh, relax, you’re the main course.”

Carol folds to her knees, pushing Natasha’s legs apart with her hands on Natasha’s thighs. She doesn’t waste time on preliminaries, her mouth hot and intense on Natasha’s pussy. Natasha moans, hips starting to buck, but Okoye puts a hand on them, keeping her other hand on Natasha’s shoulder, and says, “No, still.”

Carol draws back and Okoye moves her hand, plunging two fingers inside Natasha, her thumb teasing at Natasha’s clit. Natasha’s breath picks up as she struggles to stay still. Okoye says, “Yes, like that,” and pulls her fingers out. There’s not even a second before Carol’s mouth is on her. They switch off like that, without pattern or rhythm, until Natasha says, “I’m—Carol, I’m—”

Okoye pushes Carol even further onto Natasha then, even as she holds Natasha’s eyes and says, again, “Stay still.”

Natasha comes so hard she forgets to breathe. Okoye draws Carol up in the aftermath, kissing Natasha off her lips, their breasts sliding together in the heated wetness of the shower. Natasha is considering sliding down the wall, despite Okoye’s hand on her shoulder, when Carol pins her other shoulder and Okoye goes down, the two of them merely trading places. It takes longer this time, of course, but she comes again, this time being fucked on three of Carol’s fingers, Carol’s thumb flicking her clit, that edge of pain just what she needs.

She’s allowed to slide into a puddle then, allowed to take her turn holding them by their hips as they stand over her, reacquainting herself with the taste of them, the pressure they like, the feel of their skin under her fingertips.

The water is lukewarm by the time they actually wash. It feels good against Natasha’s fevered body.

* * *

They’re a solid twenty minutes late for dinner and Natasha does not miss Shuri’s mouthed, “I win,” at T’Challa, nor does she miss the way T’Challa glares dolefully at Okoye. Neither, for that matter, does Okoye, who simply looks smug. She greets Ramonda, “My queen.”

Ramonda smiles. She rises to greet Natasha, clasping her hands and saying, “I am so glad to be seeing you again.”

Natasha squeezes her hand and says, “It’s a shared pleasure, Your Highness.”

Ramonda’s greeting of Carol is less personal, but no less genuine. Shuri watches the whole thing like a tennis match. Once they are seated, she informs Natasha, “Of _course_ half of Wakanda would die right when The General decides to date not one, but _two_ outsiders. T’Challa is very displeased he did not get to tell you that if you messed with her, they would never find your body, which, for the record, is completely true, because he’d recruit me and not one of my murders has been discovered yet.”

She reaches for a dish even as T’Challa says, “This is why I don’t take you anywhere,” and Ramonda does the Wakandan Royal equivalent of face-palming, which is to look down at the table and sigh heartily. T’Challa adds, “And why we can’t have nice things, come to think of it.”

Natasha also reaches for a dish. Food is still unbelievably, strangely tempting. She’s not sure when that’s going to stop. Probably not while in Wakanda, because they have stupidly good food. “Well, rest assured, Okoye could most likely murder me herself and get away with it, so we’re all squared.”

“Huh, too soon,” Carol says, trying to sound light and missing the mark ever-so-slightly. Natasha doubts she would notice, actually, if she didn’t know Carol, and also if hearing those types of subtle variations weren’t her specialty. Most of the others do miss it. Natasha drops her hand onto Carol’s knee, and Okoye brushes her hand over Carol’s as she goes to take a drink.

Shuri and Carol fall into a discussion about one of the engines Monica is working on at the moment. Natasha’s willing to bet Carol knows more than she should about the project and that she’s definitely not supposed to be talking to foreign governments about it, but it’s hardly as if Wakanda is going to be stealing U.S. technology any time in the near future. Shuri ends up asking if she can talk with Monica directly, and Okoye says, “I’ll introduce you.”

Natasha doesn’t talk much. Sometimes, often, listening has been her job, but at the moment it’s just that the sound of their voices soothes her, the easy rhythm of conversation and companionship. Like food, it is hard to know when the simple sounds of life around her will become background noise again. Inside her, there is still the pulse of something not quite of the earth, as well. Unlike in the soul realm, the stone isn’t _in_ her, or maybe just with her, or, whatever was happening. But it’s not precisely gone, either. When she is ready, she will do her best to figure out what that means. Strange might be able to tell her. Or he could know someone who knows something. Or maybe she’ll have to start from scratch.

For now, it’s not worrying her, and she has bigger fish to fry. She eats two of the chocolate dessert things. It has a hint of Wakandan wine in it, earthy and a touch smoky. Somehow, it manages to taste even better on Carol and Okoye, when she’s rolling atop them in bed later, kissing them with lazy, eager, intent delight.

* * *

They stay in Wakanda for three days. Then Carol says, “I should probably make sure the rest of the universe isn’t on fire.”

She doesn’t say it like it’s a joke, and Natasha suspects it’s probably not. Natasha nods, because this is what Carol does, it’s who she is. “At least get in touch with Nebula, tell her where you’ll be. Rhodey says she’s with the Guardians right now, maybe for a while, but I’d prefer to have someone in space who might be able to come to your aid if need be.”

Carol smiles, a tight, uncertain expression. “Nat. I have—I have friends, family out there. That’s part of why I need to go. I need to see people, I need—”

“Yes,” Okoye cuts her off, gesturing broadly, indicating the palace, Wakanda.

“Yeah,” Carol agrees.

Natasha says, “Call her anyway. Because Rhodey’s pretty wedded to the planet right now, and she could probably use a friend who’s not Rocket or a tree.”

“The tree seemed pretty cool, though,” Carol says, but it’s agreement. 

“I need to get back to the compound, need to…sort some shit out,” Natasha says. The list—she’s started actually writing it out—is extensive. “But, uh. Maybe in a bit, I could.” She bites off the thought, looking away.

“I want you to meet my people, Nat.”

Natasha looks up. Carol rolls her eyes. “Both of you, I want both of you to meet the people who are important to me. It’s just, we’re kind of in the middle of something, and hands are already short on the ground. I know waiting for the right time is a dumbass thing to do, since we probably wouldn’t even be a thing if we’d tried that. Still, let’s see if we can get some of the bonfires down to a nice ember state and go from there.”

“There will always be another bonfire,” Okoye says. It’s not a retort, she’s stating a fact.

“Yeah, I know. I just think we can find a few that are the roasting marshmallows kind, not the self-immolating pyre kind.”

Okoye nods. “I will bring the marshmallows. There’s a woman in the market who makes salted caramel ones.”

“Not what I was expecting, but cool, good,” Carol says.

“I like strawberry marshmallows,” Natasha says. “Not that I’d turn down salted caramel, especially not roasted, I’m just stating, for the record.”

“I’ll see if she takes requests,” Okoye assures her.

“Thanks.”

A silence falls between them, not uncomfortable, just full, like right before a storm, when the air is hard to breathe, but not quite thick enough to swallow. Natasha says, “One more night.”

Okoye breathes out, slow and even. “Fourteen hours.”

Carol says, “You do know how to sweet talk a girl.”

* * *

The first call they share after parting is odd. There’s a sense of being back at the beginning, only too much has changed for that. And it begins with Carol introducing five Skrulls to them, and another round of “we would like to give you the shovel talk, but it’s five fucking years too late,” which doesn’t really slow the youngest one down. Her father, whom Carol is sitting shoulder to shoulder with, just smiles, alternating back and forth between a proud grin and a menacing one.

After Okoye and Natasha have been suitably threatened, Carol waves everyone off and they settle in to catch each other up. Carol looks like she hasn’t slept since they last saw her, and Natasha considers scolding her. She seems energized, though, focused, and it’s not as if Natasha has been sleeping all that much either.

She’d say she can sleep when she’s dead, but she’s pretty sure it’s still too soon. She doesn’t want to find out the hard way. Instead she listens and tries to provide advice when it seems like Carol is looking for it. 

Wakanda is holding its own, so Okoye has been helping Nakia outside its borders, as before. Natasha is coordinating with Sam because, “Somehow, we ended up being the adults in the room.”

“The team has had worse,” Okoye says, a gentle tease. 

Natasha is nowhere near healed up about Tony and Steve, does not think she will be for a while. “That was Bucky’s opinion. And Rhodey’s, for that matter.”

Carol laughs. “Banner helping out?”

“He’s on science for us at the moment. Bucky and Wanda have signed on. Strange is willing to ‘consult’ aka, show up when needed along with his crew. Rhodey and Monica are liaising with the Air Force for us. Fury, your Maria, and his Maria are doing a lot of running interference in terms of politics. I told Peter to go be a teenager for a bit, and that he could call if he needed anything. Obviously, I’ve got an in with T’Challa if I need assistance from that corner. I’m trying to keep Clint out of things. He keeps telling me he’ll come if I need him, but Laura and the kids need him more. Pepp has actually said something similar, which, fuck no. I’m not—”

Natasha takes a deep breath. “Sam, Bucky, Wanda, and I can hold down the fort for the most part. And we’ve got enough back up, if we can’t.”

“Yeah, I might have an in with a chick who can firebomb warships with her body, if you decide that’d be handy.”

“Good to know,” Natasha says, and takes a sip of wine that’s not quite as dry as the tone she’s implementing.

Carol laughs. Okoye says, “I’m dating two idiots.”

“Yeah,” Carol says, “but you want us for our bodies.”

“I’m a woman of simple pleasures,” Okoye agrees.

Natasha takes another sip, another breath, listens to them poke at each other with words, and lets the small victory of making it through another day wash over her. It’s not simple, not clean, not easy. She doesn’t need any of those things. She needs this.

**Author's Note:**

> This story is part of the LLF Comment Project, which was created to improve communication between readers and authors. This author invites and appreciates feedback (but in no way expects or feels entitled to it!!) including:
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> I can be found on tumblr @arsenicjade.


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